Relationships in the purchasing of business to business professional services: The role of personal relationships

There has been a shift from transactional to relational exchange and relationship marketing both in the business to business and professional services contexts. This paper seeks to explore the manner in which personal relationships affect the process and outcomes of purchasing of professional business services. Specifically, it focuses on the role of the professional service providers as boundary spanners in the formation of personal relationships. These personal relationships constitute the underlying basis of long-term relationships between the purchasing and provider organizations in such complex service settings. The findings of this study demonstrate that the manner in which the boundary spanners cultivate relationships support the concept of relationship specific tasks. It extends this conception by use of the data to outline the chronological process over time Understanding the roles, function, and ultimately importance, of these relationships facilitates the identification and development of appropriate strategies to manage these relationships.     

Marketing of competence: Exploring the resource-based content of value-for-customers through a case study analysis

In this article, we propose a competence-based view of value-for-customer in business markets. While literature in both strategy and marketing has provided many insights to understand the competence-based roots of value creation, the interface between the two areas is still largely unexplored. Moreover, while the notions of competence exchange and value creation feature strongly in the relational perspective, they occur only once relationships have been established. This begs the question whether competencies could be developed outside established relationships, and then marketed to guide customers' buying behavior. Basing on three case studies from the yarn manufacturing, IT systems, and automotive components industries, we identify key features of competence-based marketing: the alignment of supplier's competencies with the customer's business processes, the experiential communication of supplier's competencies, and the delivery of competencies to the buyer's business processes. Within the strategies for creating value-for-customers, these findings contribute to the understanding of the use of competencies to induce purchases.     

Customer segments as moving targets: Integrating customer value dynamism into segment instability logic

Segmentation is a mature concept in marketing strategy that continues to receive significant attention from managers and scholars alike. The key goal in segmentation is identifying and reaching profitable segments with products and services that meet the common needs of these customers. However, a fundamental issue needing rigorous attention is that customers' needs are dynamic and can induce segment instability. The purpose of this paper is to draw focus to segment instability in business-to-business markets by conceptually exploring its theoretical underpinnings and integrating related theory on customer value change to propose an agenda for future research.     

Concerning trust and information

Communication and the associated information exchanges are key drivers of the development of relationships and of the trust embedded within them. This paper considers the development of business relationships in terms of the continuing co-evolution of trust and information exchange and the issues associated with researching these processes. The interconnections of trust and information exchange are examined in a survey of business relationships involving information exchange (n = 355). Analysis of variance shows few, if any, of the aspects of the standard conceptualizations of information exchange are associated with increased levels of trust. It is information exchange norms that have the greatest (positive) association with the level of trust. These norms emerge as part of the long term co-production of the relationship itself. This has important managerial implications. We conclude there are few managerial actions involving managing communication that can “manufacture” trust and improve or develop relationships in the short term. The paper concludes with a discussion of alternative ways of envisaging communication and relationship management and the nature and future of research into the evolution of business relationships.     

郭俊的书画

郭俊，中国书画研究会副会长，中国工艺美术家协会会员，北京民族画院理事，重庆市美术家协会渝中区美协副主席。自幼酷爱书画。广求名师，师从四川美术学院杨富明教授，并得到著名画家苏葆桢、黄纯尧、水华、周北溪等先生的指教。作品继承传统，师法自然，风格别具，     

Policy Reform in the European Union Dairy Sector: Effects on Markets and Welfare

This paper analyzes the impacts of policy reforms in the EU dairy sector. It is shown that the imple-mentation of GATT agreements leads to a 4% decrease in the milk price. Prices of SMP and WMP decrease more than butter and cheese prices. EU welfare increases marginally, but distributive effects are large. The increase in quotas decided by the Berlin Agreement will cause a dramatic cut in the milk price (?10% to ?15% depending on how EU demand will increase in the future). Moreover, because of the constraints on subsidized exports, the implicit price of protein will decrease much more than the price of fat. Finally, if demand expands sufficiently, then compensatory payments (including national envelopes) will cover about 90% of the loss in producer surplus due to the milk price cut. We also inves-tigate the impact of a two-tiered quota system and show that its impacts are similar to those generated by the implementation of GATT agreements. On étudie les effets de différents scénarios de réforme de la politique laitiére européenne. La mise en oeuvre des accords du GATT implique une réduction du prix du lait de 4%. De plus, les baisses de prix des produits transformés sont plus importantes pour les poudres de lait que pour le beurre ou le fro-mage. L'impact des accords sur le bien-ětre est positif mais faible. Par contre les effets redistributifs sont importants. L'augmentation des quotas décidée lors de l'accord de Berlin entra?nera une baisse importante du prix du lait européen, de l'ordre de 10 %à 15 % selon l'évolution de la consommation intérieure. En raison des contraintes d'exportations qui portent principalement sur les produits pro-téiques, le prix implicite de la protéine de lait diminue beaucoup plus que le prix implicite de la matiére grasse laitiére. Par ailleurs, on montre que si la demande européenne s'accro?t suffisamment, les paiements compensatoires prévus couvriront environ 90 % des pertes de revenus des producteurs liées à la baisse du prix du lait. Enfin, on montre que les effets d'un scénario de double prix double quota sont proches de ceux provoqués par la mise en application des accords du GATT.     

Financing minority economic development

Conclusions A close analysis of the capital-asset pricing model’s assumptions and implications for efficient allocation of resources to investment in capital assets can form the basis for changes in the way capital markets are regulated by the federal government and in taxing policy of the government. In particular, our analysis indicates that the value of currently marketed assets can be increased by the inclusion in portfolios of currently nonmarketed assets.Moreover, the value of nonmarketed assets emerges as a significant instrumental variable for policy makers.The government can increase the value of all currently marketed assets by increasing positive changes in the value of nonmarketed assets.This might be accomplished by requiring by legislation or rule, for example, that a certain proportion of the listed securities on any exchange be comprised of the securities of black firms and other firms whose securities are not now marketed.The government might want, by tax incentive, to promote investment in firms with nonmarketed assets.It might want to increase the funding level of institutions such as MESBIC’S supplying equality finance to small black firms.     

The Delisting Bias in CRSP's Nasdaq Data and Its Implications for the Size Effect

We investigate the bias in CRSP's Nasdaq data due to missing returns for delisted stocks. We find that the missing returns are large and negative on average, and that delisted stocks experience a substantial decrease in liquidity. We estimate that using a corrected return of −55 percent for missing performance-related delisting returns corrects the bias. We revisit previous work which finds a size effect among Nasdaq stocks. After correcting for the delisting bias, there is no evidence that there ever was a size effect on Nasdaq. Our results are inconsistent with most risk-based explanations of the size effect.     

Collaborative buyer-supplier relationships and downstream information in marketing channels

Research on buyer-supplier relationships has emphasized the importance of collaboration and business networks. We aim to study the effects of downstream information on the collaborative buyer-supplier relationship. Downstream information refers to the information a firm obtains from marketing channels, be they wholesalers, distributors or retailers. The approach allows firms to concentrate their efforts on the most relevant sources of information and not on the whole network. Survey data was gathered from the Dutch potted plant and flower industry to test this hypothesis. Our findings demonstrate that collaborative relationships are contingent on downstream information from both the buying perspective (wholesalers) and from the supplying perspective (producers).     

Market Segment Response Through Field Experimentation

A key assumption underlying segmentation studies is that marketing efforts have differential effects on market segments. This question was investigated in the context of a field experiment involving enlistment in the armed forces. Approximately 8000 completed questionnaires administered at various stages in the US Navy enlistment recruiting process were collected at two points in time, corresponding to a pre- and post-experimental intervention. Attitudinal data were analysed to identify meaningful segments. Differential responses of market segments to advertising and recruiter changes were found, providing direction for evaluation of, and changes in, the creative component of advertising.